QuickBooks UK Review (2026)The 90% Offer Ends at Month Six
By Daan Haket · Researched and written with an AI assistant · who does what
The 90% offer is the number to be careful with, because it is the one you will see everywhere and it is not what you will pay.
UK sole traders and small businesses that need Making Tax Digital submissions handled and would rather their accountant worked in the same system they do — the accountant access on every tier is the practical reason most people land here.
you are outside the UK, where this specific product and pricing do not apply, or your bookkeeping is simple enough that a spreadsheet plus your accountant's own software costs nothing extra.
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Pricing (2026)
✓ Pricing re-verified 11 Oct 2026
Read in a live browser on their own UK pricing page, 28 Aug 2026, in pounds. The page now shows monthly list prices and carries no annual option: Sole Trader Plus £10, Simple Start £16, Essentials £38 for three users, Plus £56 for five and Advanced £123 for twenty-five — all plus VAT at 20%. A discount was running at the time of reading and the page states its length plainly: 90% off for SIX months, not for a first year, showing those tiers as £1, £1.60, £3.80, £5.60 and £12.30 a month before the list rate applies.
There is a 30-day free trial as an alternative to buying. Payroll is a paid add-on rather than part of any tier, including Advanced. The Intuit Intelligence chat is on every tier with a stated limit of queries per month. CHANGED SINCE 31 JUL 2026: on that reading the page had an annual toggle and the offer was recorded as a first-year discount; today there is no annual toggle and the offer is six months.
Full pricing notes (3 more paragraphs)
The underlying list prices are unchanged — the annual figures noted then (£108, £172, £410.40, £604.80) are 10% off twelve times today's monthly rates — but Advanced was not recorded at all and the year-two framing no longer matches the page. Re-verified 11 October 2026 in a live browser: all five list prices, the 90%-for-six-months offer and the 30-day trial option unchanged.
The offer terms on the page add that the discount requires the Buy Now option, makes you ineligible for the 30-day free trial and is for new QuickBooks Online customers only; the cancellation terms say a cancellation takes effect at the end of the monthly billing period with no pro-rated refund. The FAQ lists payroll as an add-on for Simple Start, Essentials, Plus and Advanced, not for Sole Trader Plus.
A monthly query limit on Intuit Intelligence was not shown on this reading.
Plans change — always verify the live price on their site.
The honest knock
The page says six months, not a year: Sole Trader Plus shows £1 and renews at £10 a month, Plus shows £5.60 and renews at £56. That tenfold step arrives in month seven, on a tool you will by then have your entire bookkeeping inside — which is precisely when switching is hardest. Add 20% VAT on top of every figure, and add payroll separately if you need it. Budget from the list price and treat the discount as a half-year rebate, not as the price.
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What QuickBooks UK does
Intuit's accounting platform for the UK market — bookkeeping, VAT and Making Tax Digital submissions, invoicing and payroll as a paid add-on.
What buyers report about QuickBooks UK
Hands-on: not tested by usReported by buyers: GetApp UK, NerdWallet and UK accounting reviews, read August 2026
Themes from the buyer-review sites listed at the foot of this page, read in August 2026. We have not run QuickBooks UK ourselves, so this is other buyers' experience rather than ours. We summarise it here because the complaints are usually the part a vendor page leaves out.
- • Cash-flow projection and customisable reporting are genuinely sophisticated, and testing bears that out.
- • It is the platform most UK accountants already know, which makes handover trivial. Steep first-year discounts are common.
- • Price rises plus declining support is the combination reviewers name as pushing them away. The increase they cited (reviews read August 2026) was a US-dollar one for QuickBooks in the United States, Simple Start from $30 to $35 and Advanced from $200 to $235, not the UK pound ladder in the price section.
- • That 90%-off first year means year two is the real price. Budget from the standard rate.
- • Frequent upselling within the product.
- • Updates ship without telling users what changed, and reviewers report nobody to ask about it.
Where the ratings disagree. Read the price talk above against the UK page rather than as it stands, because it is about a different market and an older offer. The increase reviewers name — Simple Start $30 to $35, Advanced $200 to $235 — is in US dollars and belongs to QuickBooks in the United States; the UK page this review covers is in pounds and lists Simple Start at £16 and Advanced at £123 a month excluding VAT. And their "year two is the real price" framing assumes a first-year discount: read on 28 August 2026, the UK page states the 90% offer runs for six months, so the step up to the standard rate arrives in month seven rather than month thirteen. The warning itself still holds — it just lands twice as soon.
Plus is cheaper per user than Essentials
Read on their own UK pricing page on 28 August 2026, in pounds before VAT: Sole Trader Plus £10 a month, Simple Start £16, Essentials £38 for three users, Plus £56 for five, Advanced £123 for twenty-five. Divide the middle two by their seats and the ladder inverts. Essentials is £12.67 per user a month; Plus, though £18 more, is £11.20 — 12% cheaper per head. That £18 buys two extra seats at £9 each, below both published per-seat rates: if a fourth person needs access, upgrading is the cheapest seat on the page.
Then the number that should decide this, which is not a tier. A 90% discount was running and the page states its length plainly: six months, not a year. Sole Trader Plus shows £1 and becomes £10; Plus shows £5.60 and becomes £56 — a tenfold step landing in month seven. What upgrading does not solve: VAT at 20% sits on every figure, payroll stays a paid add-on on every tier from Simple Start to Advanced, and Sole Trader Plus is not on the FAQ's list of plans payroll can be added to at all. A larger plan buys seats and reports, not a lower renewal.
Questions we are still checking
Facts about QuickBooks UK that would change a buying decision, and where we stand on each. An unanswered question does not mean the feature is missing; it means we have not confirmed it yet.
- After cancelling, can I still open my books read-only, and for how long? Still checking
Applies to: all plans.
Why it matters: the books end up inside QuickBooks; the pricing page covers when a cancellation takes effect but not what access remains afterwards.
Checked: QuickBooks UK pricing page (cancellation terms) (2026-10-11)
Have a public source that answers one of these? How we review explains how we check and correct.
How to actually use QuickBooks UK
Write down the month-seven price before you start, because that is when the offer ends. It is £10 a month for Sole Trader Plus, £16 Simple Start, £38 Essentials, £56 Plus and £123 Advanced, all excluding VAT and all roughly ten times what the first six months show. Add 20%, and add payroll if you employ anyone. Count your users next, not your features. Essentials caps at three and Plus at five, and because Plus is cheaper per head the seat count settles the tier more cleanly than the feature list does.
At three users and growing, buying Plus outright costs £9 per extra seat. Choose between the offer and the trial first: the offer terms say the discount requires Buy Now and makes you ineligible for the 30-day free trial. If you take the trial, use the 30 days on the work you actually dread — the VAT return, the bank reconciliation, the invoice chase — rather than on the setup wizard.
And do the import during the trial, not after: the cost of this decision is not the subscription, it is that your books end up inside it, which is exactly what makes the step at month seven so hard to walk away from.
Where this section comes from: our research notes (115 words)
Intuit's own UK pricing page, quickbooks.intuit.com/uk/pricing/, read 10 September 2026 in a browser (the page times out for plain HTTP clients from here). The plan ladder shows Sole Trader Plus £10, Simple Start £16, Essentials £38, Plus £56 and Advanced £123 a month, with the offer banner reading '90% off for 6 months' beside a 'Free trial for 30 days' option and each card repeating 'Save 90% for 6 months, then £10/mo' in its own words.
That six-month window, not a first year, is the point our review makes about the discount. Re-verified 11 October 2026 in a live browser on quickbooks.intuit.com/uk/pricing/, including the FAQ and the 'Important pricing details' block (offer terms, cancellation terms).
QuickBooks UK vs FreshBooks, side by side
Each column shows the vendor’s own published entry price, read on the date shown. Entry prices can cover different services or units, so check what each one buys. We do not average them into a score.
The QuickBooks UK link above is an affiliate link — we may earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you — and the other column is a plain link. Neither changes what this table says.
The natural comparison is FreshBooks — the other small-business accounting tools we cover — QuickBooks' advantage in the UK is HMRC recognition for Making Tax Digital and how many accountants already work in it; compare on the renewal price rather than on the six-month offer.
Frequently asked questions
Can I take the 90% offer and the 30-day free trial?
No, it is one or the other. The offer terms on quickbooks.intuit.com/uk/pricing/ (read 11 October 2026) say you must select Buy Now and will not be eligible for a 30-day free trial, that the offer is for new QuickBooks Online customers only and cannot be combined with other QuickBooks Online offers, and that after the stated months you pay the then-current monthly price, charged monthly until you cancel.
What happens to my money if I cancel mid-month?
You keep access until the period ends and get nothing back. The cancellation terms on the pricing page (read 11 October 2026) say you cancel under Account & Settings, the cancellation takes effect at the end of the monthly billing period, and there is no pro-rated refund. The FAQ says there is no cancellation fee and you can switch plans at any time. What access to your books remains after that is not stated on the page: not confirmed.
Can I add payroll to Sole Trader Plus?
The pricing page does not offer it. Its FAQ (read 11 October 2026) says plans do not include payroll and that payroll can be added, at extra cost, to Simple Start, Essentials, Plus or Advanced; Sole Trader Plus is not on that list. If you employ anyone, Simple Start at £16 a month before VAT is the cheapest plan the page pairs with payroll.
Is this a hands-on review of QuickBooks UK?
This is a researched assessment, not a hands-on test — where we've used a tool ourselves, we say so explicitly. We name what each tool is good and bad at, and we earn a commission only if you sign up, at no cost to you.
- Buyer reviews on GetApp UK, NerdWallet and UK accounting reviews, read August 2026.
- QuickBooks UK’s own published pricing page.
Others in this category
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